going to bed, Grandma.’ He felt the letter in his back pocket.
‘You’re old enough to know what you’re doing, aren’t you?’
‘There’s nothing going on. I’m just going to bed. I’m beat.’ He opened the door to the room he shared with Chris and Billy. The floor was littered with stuff, old magazines and T-shirts and underwear and socks and empty beer cans, but he didn’t care. He flopped onto his bed and closed his eyes. He couldn’t move anymore. ‘Good night,’ he heard his grandmother say in the distance, and he thought of Yellow Springs, Ohio and saw a vast meadow stretched out before him, and cows and trees and cornfields under the clear blue sky. Then he fell asleep.
He saw Don Cooper and Nona walk hand in hand into the Circle Ballroom. Cooper had a dirty bandage tied around his head. ‘Hey, Omar,’ he said. He didn’t let go of Nona’s hand. ‘Hey, Omar.’
He said something back but they didn’t hear him. It was as though he were watching it all from a distance, as though he was seeing himself as well as Nona and Cooper.
‘You think you’re too good for us? Is that it? Is that why you don’t open that mouth o’ yours? I said: “Hey, Omar”.’
He was outside his own body. He looked at Nona in her glittery blue dress. She teetered on high heels and held for dear life onto Don Cooper’s arm. Omar tried to say something to her, something nice, that she looked good, but again his words dissolved into the gray hum of the fan in the middle of the ceiling. She didn’t even see him move his mouth. There was no music. There were no other people.
‘Come on,’ Nina whispered in Cooper’s ear. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Bye, Omar,’ Cooper said, with a theatrical wink.
‘Omar. Wake up.’ He heard Reggie’s voice from way off. He opened his eyes. He was still lying there on his back on his bed, on top of the covers, fully dressed. He hadn’t budged since he fell asleep hours ago. He was cold. His muscles hurt.
‘Your grandma said you were here. What’s going on? You were supposed to pick me up at six.’ Reggie was standing at the foot of the bed.
‘What time is it?’
‘Seven-thirty. If we’re still going to do something … ’
‘Easy, man. I … I … I … ’ He thought of that note from Evans. ‘I have to get something to eat. You go on.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing.’
‘We’re not going out?’
‘I got stuff to do.’
‘You look bad, man. Go fix yourself up first.’
‘Evans came by.’ He propped himself up. ‘For a job, Saturday. Sorry.’
‘Shit.’
‘What?’
‘Want me to go with you?’
He shook his head. ‘Better not.’
‘How come?’
He wasn’t sure if it was because he wanted to protect Reggie or just wanted to keep Evans’s jobs for himself.
‘See you at the factory, okay?’
After Reggie left he put on clean clothes and splashed cold water on his face. He crept downstairs and left the house by the front door.
The keys to Sandra’s old VW were still in the ignition. He got in and started the car. He felt in his pocket. Five twenty-dollar bills. It wouldn’t be enough for a decent gun but maybe Leo would give him a good deal if he heard that Evans had sent him.
Omar parked halfway up Wooster Ave., got out, and walked to the Hi-De-Ho Lounge. It was getting dark. He looked at the full-leafed lindens lining the street. They grew a little crooked, slanting toward each other; the upper branches and leaves touched but didn’t block out the light. It was like he was walking through a tunnel or under a bridge. In a few weeks there would be a thick, porridgy carpet of yellow and red and brown in the road. It was early October, and he could just about catch the sweet-sour scent of autumn. He liked that smell, the smell of earth and wetness and rot. He remembered trudging barefoot through the thick layer of half-decomposed leaves as a child, fantasizing that he was wading upstream through a fast-moving river. A few days later all the mush and mud was gone, the streets clean and new, the trees became bare, and black silhouettes against the sky. As though the earth had been rinsed clean in a single night. How could all those leaves have just disappeared into nothing?
He spotted Leo right away, sitting alone at a corner of the bar. He was pretty much a permanent fixture at the Hi-De-Ho. Always there in that corner. He wore a jogging suit and a baseball cap, which was supposed to make him look younger. But the deep lines in Leo’s gaunt face gave away his age. Omar could hardly imagine this man was ever young.
‘You’re early,’ Leo said, with a low, lazy voice.
Omar pulled up a barstool. ‘You want to do me a favor?’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
Omar took out the rumpled twenties. ‘It’s for Evans. Evans from Cleveland.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Action?’
‘Security.’
‘Oh la la … ’ Leo sang. Omar wondered if he was being laughed at, but controlled himself. He couldn’t afford any nasty business right now. He thought of Evans’s note.
‘Can I count on you?’ Omar asked. He alone heard how formal and official those few words sounded.
‘Tomorrow night,’ Leo said. ‘Same time.’
The Antioch College campus in Yellow Springs, Ohio resembled a vacation resort. The sun gave the proud redbrick academic buildings an extra glow. In the middle of the campus was a large quad. Beyond the faculties and student dorms were meadows and fields and woods and wooden houses. It was a pleasant late-summer day.
Omar checked his watch. One-thirty. That morning he had gone straight home from the factory, slept for two hours, had breakfast, and then driven to Yellow Springs. He felt refreshed, even though he knew that the clear-headedness was mostly thanks to adrenaline. He looked at the black girls with their soft afros and big silver hoop earrings. Girls in halter tops and long flowered skirts. Their satin skin. Boys in brightly colored dashikis. They must be about his age, but they seemed much younger. Everyone appeared so carefree today, laughing and flirting with each other.
He observed, from a short distance, the activity on the quad. His hand glided over the inside pocket of his leather coat; he felt the heaviness of his .38 and the .45 Leo had sold him the previous evening. If those students only knew. Their innocent blitheness had something contagious about it, but at the same time their lightheartedness irritated him. Like this was some kind of party. Evans hadn’t asked him to be in charge for nothing: he knew that the event’s organizers were being shadowed by the
